


Stories of the Second Self: Heart and Soul of the Craft

by John_Steiner



Series: Alter Idem [42]
Category: Urban Fantasy - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:15:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22532341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner
Summary: A girl's nightmare of being teased mercilessly and crying at school pulls her out of sleep only to realize the she can still hear crying. She knows her grandmother works late into the night refurbishing dolls, but the basement where that work was carried out had always been locked. The girl decides this night to peek.
Series: Alter Idem [42]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618813





	Stories of the Second Self: Heart and Soul of the Craft

Crying in my sleep. All I could hear was crying, and from the dream saw mean kids picking on me. Except the dream ended, making me realize I wasn't crying in my sleep, yet I still heard it after waking.

It came from downstairs. I gathered up my night robe to put on over my nightie and crept to the door. Grandma often labored late into the night on her doll refurbishing to supplement her retirement. She was famous throughout the town and many surrounding towns for her craft, and often got offers to restore newer dolls. Yet, always she refused, and took only aged dolls that had seen at least one full childhood of joy and games.

Cracking open my door, I saw that the coast is clear. Grandma always turned off the upstairs lights when she decided that I was staying in bed for the night. Carefully, I tiptoed to the stairs that adjoined two halls and led down to the foyer. My hand clutched the railing, as I picked out each step, and then the next, careful that I didn't make a sound, and that the step didn't creak.

Grandma did her doll work in what was once a study, so I lightly trotted over to that door, which was closed. Putting my ear to it, I didn't hear anything. My knuckles turned white, as he turned the doorknob slowly to peek in. All the shelves and tables were covered with dolls and the toys associated with them. There were a couple of mirrors, which I could use to see where in the room Grandma was before sneaking in.

Grandma had really bad cataracts, and so I often wondered why she had mirrors in the room in the first place. Being nearly blind, she often didn't notice me when I was more than halfway across the room from her, yet she always seemed to catch me doing something that she didn't allow.

Here and there, throughout the house Grandma was place a doll as decoration, though I would pretend that they were spying on my for her. It was a silly game for littler girls that I stopped playing when turning ten.

And yet?

The crying grew more desperate, and I realized it came from the basement. Grandma kept the door to the basement locked, so I never knew what was down there. This time, however, the door was open just a crack, and from it the flicker of candle light blinked through.

Unlike the other doors of the house, this one creaked when I tried to slowly open it further. The first time made my heart leap up into my throat. I froze there for a long minute, thinking I'd hear her harpy shrill yelling at me. Yet, the noise from whoever wept seemed to drown out my mistake. I timed the rest of the door movement with particularly loud cries, until it was wide enough to slip through sideways.

The stairs down were cold hard cement, so I only had to worry about the sound of my bare feet slapping. Keeping on my toes, I descended the rest of the way. Candles adorned shelves and stands that I never knew dwelt down here. In contrast to Grandmas garden gnomes, the statues standing watch on both sides of a fireplace leered with demonic faces.

Yet, no sign of Grandma or whoever was crying. Continuing on, I found another short hall to a back room, which I could tell was the source of the desperate sobs of a kid. Daring ever onward, I felt that any moment I'd die of fright if I heard Grandma scolding me for intruding.

Instead, I saw her standing, with her back to me, before where a child lay stripped of clothes and bound to the table. Around the walls were yet more dolls that Grandma hadn't yet started working on. The nature of Grandma's craft revealed itself then and there.

In Grandma's hands raised a knife, that she then plunged down into the kid. With the gurgled almost-scream, I saw a doll part its mouth and its chest expanded, as if taking in its first breath of life. Next, its accusing eyes cast themselves in my direction, and Grandma wheeled around.

Her aged tree bark face and clouded eyes sneered at me with blood all over her front and her hands as if sprayed.


End file.
